He was taught to be very cautious lest that livelihood be taken away. The only private fears he had were also old ones, having to do with the whole false-prophet syndrome, the fear of leading people down the garden path, and so forth. Those private and public arenas became connected, however. (Long pause.) He was worried that his natural expression and search, publicly expressed at that point in history, was dangerous because it put him in the gaze of a growing band of fanatics on the one hand, and also roused old fears of a private nature, having to do with the overall validity of revelatory information.

I do not want to oversimplify, but it is as if each generation or group of generations seeks it own overall themes, about which the world will be organized. Those will appear in the private lives of citizens and in private dreams and in national events, or global ones, so that both arenas of activity are always intimately involved.

Ruburt found it very difficult to take a public stand, as separate from, say, a private one. My book and his—that is, Mass Events and God of Jane—both do take public stands. They comment clearly on issues that affect individual and private, and national or community behavior. The importance of impulses was stressed in particular, and the acceptance of such an idea is important to Ruburt’s recovery, of course—but also vital in the behavior of nations.

THE PRIVATE PROBABLE MAN, THE PRIVATE PROBABLE WOMAN, THE SPECIES IN PROBABILITIES, AND BLUEPRINTS FOR REALITIES

— to be called (pause): “The Private Probable Man, the Private Probable Woman, the Species in Probabilities, and Blueprints for Realities.”

Give us a moment … We have been using Ruburt and Joseph’s private experience here. For now, however, I would like each reader to consider the members of his or her family, so that in a more direct fashion the reader can find in private experience a realization of some ideas I want to present.

[...] With most mental aberrations, you are dealing with people whose private symbols are so heavily thrust over prime sense data that even those data sometimes become almost invisible. These individuals often use the physical world in the way that most people use the dream world, so that for them it is difficult to distinguish between a private and a publicly-shared reality.

[...] Often, however, they have less of a solid foundation than others in dealing with a mass-shared reality, and so they attempt to impose their own private symbols upon the world, or to form a completely private world. [...]

[...]

(9:48.) The “private psyche” sounds like a fine term, but it is meaningless unless you apply it to your psyche. [...] Your private experience is far more filled with such decisions than you usually realize. [...]

[...] Let us look for a moment at the private psyche.

[...] Any choice you make privately affects it biologically and psychically.

In the past, because of your God concepts, private revelations were indeed highly unwieldy. [...] This applied not only privately, however, but to the mass-accepted revelations of all religions, that could justify righteous wars for God’s sake, or justify murder in the name of peace.

(On September 27, Jane woke up after her nap with a batch of material in mind on: Private Revelation, and the Voice of God, or Divine Dialogues, which she wrote down. [...]

[...] If God could tell a man to slay a son, and if private revelation were granted validity, then “divinely inspired crimes” might not only be legion, but might also take man’s energies away from accepted Godly pursuits—like fighting the infidels or heretics at home (all louder).

(“In an important fashion those private sessions parallel his material for Mass Events … material that did make us view the world and current events quite differently than we had earlier. [...] Some of those sessions were devoted to our private beliefs, but usually Seth put such beliefs into the larger social context. [...] So interspersed in all of that private material are some excellent — and lively — discussions of events current in the world at that time, as well as discourses on connections between creativity and Framework 2, and topics as diverse as psychotic behavior and early civilizations. [...]

[...] It projects its desires outward onto the physical world, seeking through private experience and social contact to actualize its potentials, and in such a way that the potentials of others are also encouraged. It seeks to flesh out its dreams, and when these find no response in social life, it will nevertheless take personal expression in a kind of private religion of its own.

[...] Those sessions, whether private or not, are of course more than double in number the 22 sessions Jane has given for Mass Events [not counting tonight’s]. [...]

In the next portion of this book we will discuss people who are frightened of themselves, then, and the roles that they seek in private and social behavior. [...] Such environments may be private, as in the case of persons with what are generally called mental disorders, or they may be shared by many, in — for example — mass paranoia.

[...] There are people who follow a cult that is purely private, with rules and regulations as rigorous as any sent down to a group of frightened followers by a despot of whatever kind. [...] A large portion of this book will be devoted, of course, to the introduction of concepts that will privately encourage greater productivity and creativity, and therefore automatically contribute to more healthy and sane social ways.

Dictation: If you cannot trust your private self, then you will not trust yourself in your relationships with others or in society.

(At lunch today I suggested to Jane that she put together a short book on the Frameworks 1 and 2 material Seth has given us since he introduced that concept in a private session last September 17, 1977. We’ve had 31 private or nonbook sessions since then, and a number of them contain information on Frameworks 1 and 2 — much of it relevant to that presented in Mass Events. [...]

(Jane showed more interest in my idea than I’d thought she would, and spent the afternoon going over those private sessions. [...]

(10:13.) Now and then people have such moments, and yet each private reality has its existence in an eternal creativity from which, again, your world springs.

[...] It is aware not only of its own private position, as you are of yours, but it is also familiar with the mass events of its reality. It is intimately involved in the creation of your own private experience.

[...] You constantly process those data that come to you in your private life, and that information includes bulletins from all over the world, through your news broadcasts and so forth.

(A one-minute pause at 10:14.) Give us a moment… On any given day the events of your private lives fit within the larger pattern of world events, in which they have their context. [...]

[...] The private oracle: What does that mean? [...] The private oracle is the voice of the inner multidimensional self — the part of each person not fully contained in his or her personhood, the part of the unknown self-structure out of which personhood, with its physical alliance, springs. [...]

[...] Efforts could then be made to understand and interpret private symbolism, and individuals within a society would be taught to take advantage of their own inner data to enrich their personal lives and help the community.

I am aware that some of this sounds “retrogressive,” for I am even suggesting a situation in which politicians or statesmen would learn to “dream wisely” — and become aware of the psyche, the mass psyche, of their people, and tune into the “private oracle.”

These institutions and disciplines are composed of individuals, each restrained by limiting ideas about their own private reality; and so it is with private reality that we will begin and always return, period. These ideas in this book are meant to expand the private reality of each reader. [...]

So the book had a private beginning. [...]

[...] I comment now and then about photographs that belong to the Butts family [including Jane Roberts], yet any reader can look at old photographs and ask the same questions, applying what is said here to private experience. [...]

[...] The dream also says that like a private eye you are on a search, but the private eye also stands for your own private eye, or your own world view, so that you are in a process of enlarging your own private way of viewing reality. [...]

A trance is a very private phenomenon. [...] However private a trance may be, it must take place in a physical world of shared events. [...]

[...] In Mass Events, though, Seth goes further, maintaining that our private impulses are meant to provide the impetus for the development of our own abilities in a way that will also contribute to the best interests of the species and the natural world as well. [...] What Seth is really saying here is that our impulses are meant to help us create our own realities on a personal basis in a way that will enhance both our private lives and our civilizations.

So while Seth’s books go out into the public world, the sessions themselves rise from our private lives. [...] In this book Seth describes the continuum of existence that holds us all together and blends our private experiences into world events. [...]

The Turkish towel represents the private nature of the self—private attire that you might use in the bath, of intimate nature that comes into contact with the body not so much to hide it as to dry it, give it pleasure, or what have you. [...]

(3:33.) The harder you try, therefore, to force your artistic nature into the public system of beliefs, to teach it how to service cars, for example (intently), or to apply itself to the mechanical world, the more it resists, refuses the suitable apparel or turns it into private apparel—that is, it asserts its private self. [...]

(Long pause.) The more you try to live “a life of service,” or to concentrate primarily upon providing such a service, the more then your artistic self displays its private nature. [...]

[...] Biologically, in your terms, such “brotherhood” operates instinctively in the cooperation of the body’s cells, as they function together to form the private corporal structure. [...] You take it for granted that because the cells work so well together, they have no private uniqueness.

[...] In certain terms they become the cell’s private “idea” of its own growth and development, a picture alive within the cell in terms of physical information, a part of its structure. [...]

[...] Privately your thoughts are expressions of your idealizations; and while expressing those inner patterns they also modify and creatively change them. [...]

[...] One is from a private session, two are from “nonbook” regular sessions, and one is from Dreams itself.)

—FROM A PRIVATE SESSION, JULY 12, 1979     

[...] If you want to call any one dream event a private event, then I would have to tell you that that private event actually was your personal contribution to a larger multisided dream event, many-layered, so that one level might deal with the interests of a group to which you belong—say your family, [or] your political or religious organization—reaching “outward” to the realm of national government and world affairs. (Pause.) As your private conscious life is lived in a community setting of one kind or another as a rule, so do your dreams take place in the same context, so that as you dream for yourself, to some extent you also dream for your own family, for your community, and for the world.

[...] Actually, we’ve been quite aware of the potential of such an idea ever since Seth began that material a year ago.³ After supper this evening we went over the loose-leaf notebook of information Jane has accumulated for The Magical Approach to Reality: A Seth Book, and discussed how she could follow her outline in putting all of that material—on our dreams, psychic events and insights, her poetry and our essays—together with Seth’s private sessions on the magical approach. [...] I now feel that many of those sessions aren’t so private after all, and can help others. [...]

Jane’s idea tonight was to have a session on Dreams only: “I don’t want more private stuff that’ll just make me feel more stupid,” she said. [...]

[...] The many people, and connecting rooms, represented the new structure of vaster beliefs that are all interconnected while you are still, however, concentrating upon the private creative self, and from that viewpoint viewing the world — hence your private corner in which you painted, as from that corner of private creativity you viewed the large interacting structure of new beliefs.

There was a greater and greater body of knowledge to be transmitted as physical existence continued, for they did not transmit private knowledge only, but the entire body of knowledge that belonged to the group or tribe as a whole.

(Although this is a private session that Jane and I are filing separately from “regular” material, we’re also presenting it in Mass Events because of the many insights Seth offers into individual and mass events in general, and into our personal realities in particular. [...]

[...] Both of you, highly creative, find your creativity in conflict with your ideas of sexuality, privately and in your stances with the world. [...]

I have given material on that before (but in private sessions). [...]

(Jane’s Tuesday paper on her feelings is evidently a very important one, representing some excellent insights on her part about her repressed impulses, her fears about my reactions to various events, her private nature and public appearances, and related topics. [...]

(“Despite the beliefs and teachings of religion and psychology, impulses are biological and psychic directional signals, meant to nudge the individual toward his/her greatest opportunities for expression and development privately—and also to insure the person’s contribution to mass social reality.”

[...] These computations are made by drawing upon the psyche’s innate knowledge of probabilities on a private and mass basis.”